But perhaps the most important figure in the children's world—while they were yet children—was their old nurse Martha, a very superior and excellent person who had lived with Mrs. Seaton before her marriage. Martha had another servant under her; but she would share with no one the delightful duty of looking after Paul and Joanna. It was Martha who corrected their childish sins and comforted their childish sorrows; and it was Martha who placed them upon an intimate, yet withal comfortable, footing with the principalities and powers of the spiritual world. To Martha they owed their ineradicable belief that an inclination to idleness or disobedience or greediness was no mere instinct, but a suggestion of the Evil One himself, who—bat-winged and cloven-footed, as he appeared in the illustrations to the Pilgrim's Progress—lurked in the dark places of the china-pantry and the back-stairs, for the set purpose of betraying to destruction the souls of the minister's children. Likewise, they were taught that the subdual of this inclination was no mere outcome of a line of plain-living, high-thinking ancestors, but a triumph of the powers of light over the powers of darkness. These beliefs Paul and Joanna never outgrew; which, perhaps, accounted for the fact that, as man and woman, they did not underestimate the difference between good and evil.
At Chayford Paul and Joanna spent three of the interminable years of childhood; and Chayford Chapel was ever afterwards associated in their minds with all that is sacred and holy. It was there that they had first touched the fringe of the Unseen, and caught glimpses of life's deeper meanings; it was there that they had sung the old-fashioned hymns to the old-fashioned tunes, and had felt as if they themselves were somehow one with the white-robed multitude, which no man can number, singing the song that the angels cannot learn. Then the hearts of the children were filled with joy and their eyes with tears, and a strange thrill ran through the whole of their being. They did not understand why they felt so gloriously happy and yet wanted to cry; for they were then too young to know that earth, and probably heaven, has nothing better to offer us than that same thrill, which runs through us when we catch fleeting glimpses of the Beautiful and the True, and rise superior for the time being to all that is sordid and cowardly and mean. For the moment, we are "pure in heart"; and therefore, either through the interpretation of art or the revelation of nature, either in the loyalty of a great people or in the love on a familiar face, we "see God".
When Paul and Joanna were respectively eighteen and nineteen, their father's health gave way and he was obliged to "sit down"—a synonym among Methodist ministers for retiring upon half-pay—and he chose Chayford as the spot where he would finally settle. The Seatons had spent their three years at Chayford some time previously; and it had suited them so well that they selected it as their permanent abode.
There is no doubt that the Methodist system of having a sort of "general post" among the ministry every Conference keeps the Church together in a most successful way; but there is also no doubt that a triennial removal falls heavily on the women of the ministers' households. No Wesleyan minister can stay longer than three years in any circuit; and he need only stay one; so, like the Mohammedans and their Hegira, all his race reckons time by "Conference".
There was a nomadic strain in Joanna's blood, inherited from three generations of preaching ancestry; and she was incapable of feeling happy under any roof-tree for a longer period than three years. But her mother was of a less restless disposition; and had learnt that if one is continually moving one's Lares and Penates, these idols are apt to get very much the worse for wear, if not actually broken to pieces. It is only when a Wesleyan minister "sits down," that his family are able to thoroughly understand the meaning of the word home. Therefore Mrs. Seaton rejoiced in secret over her house at Chayford. Her husband's health was not such as to give her any real anxiety, but he was growing too old for full work, and needed rest; and the fortune that she had brought to him made him feel that he was justified in taking, with a clear conscience, the repose for which he craved.
Paul was doing very well at Kingswood School; and Joanna was doing equally well in the school of domestic life; and their parents' cup of joy was full when at last Paul won a scholarship at Oxford.
On the morning when Paul's triumph had been made known at home, Mrs. Seaton went into the kitchen after breakfast to break the glad news to Martha. But the latter met her with a most ominous expression of countenance.
"There's a sad thing happened this morning, ma'am, and no mistake," she began, with a profound sigh.
"Indeed, Martha, and what is that?" inquired her mistress.
"The best hot-water jug has gone to its long home."